Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday February 10, 2014 @05:51PM
from the on-your-own dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon has discontinued its Home Monitoring and Control solution, a $10/month service for do-it-yourselfers that enables remote monitoring and control of security, lighting, thermostats and more. The author notes Verizon 'was attempting to become the first successful provider of a DIY security/automation system that had a monthly fee separate from a professionally monitored security system. ... Providers could (and do) charge premiums of $10 or more for automation and self-monitored security as an attachment to professional monitoring, but not as a standalone service.'"

I did this for quite a while too. Unfortunately it doesn't qualify for any insurance discounts, so I went with a system that does. The insurance discount is about equal to the monthly bill, and I don't have to worry about any maintenance.

That's legit. I'm a little different... any discount that only offsets the cost of the service isn't a big enough discount to tempt me. I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't trust third parties with my data, so I run my own cloud service, my own email server, etc. specifically to minimize the exposure of my data to unaccountable companies.

Take your leftist anti gun rhetoric somewhere else. He didn't even mention guns. Also, it's not in the best interest of free societies to run around telling individuals that they should leave everything to unaccountable 'professionals' (who are also human, too, btw).

Point of order: there's nothing "leftist" about anti-gun rhetoric. As the socialist writer George Orwell noted, "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."

No, I'll argue that you're paying for a product (the music). If you're paying someone to monitor, you're paying for a service. If this were DIY, you'd be Doing It Yourself rather than paying someone else to do it. But your example does clue me in to the source of our disagreement -- we're talking about different levels of abstraction. For me, the whole point of DIY is to not be reliant on someone for the thing.

My real point is that if Verizon was marketing this as a DIY thing, then there's no mystery as to

Let's see: That's 7 that might be prevented by having a gun, 11 most likely N/A (they'll figure out some other way), and 4 that might be due to a gun (or just klutzes that might find some other way to remove themselves from the genepool). 7 - 4.....Sounds like we need more guns...

You do realize that those statistics don't count the majority of times that a gun is used for self defense, right? If someone commits assault or murder, the police are virtually always contacted. When someone commits suicide, the authorities are virtually always contacted. When someone shoots themselves on accident, they will generally go to a hospital, and... the authorities are contacted.

On the other hand, in the vast majority of cases, when a gun is used for self protection in the home, no shots ar

Liberal Motto: If reality proves you wrong, accuse the other person of being a conservative, reject that reality and substitute your own.

I am not even close to what anyone would call a "Conservative". It's just that Liberals tend to be so batshit insane that they can't even comprehend that there is anything but the Red team and Blue team.

So let me get this straight. In the US, you have the much lauded right to bear arms, but it only applies if you actually fire a shot?

This happened not to long ago in Kansas where a person legally carrying concealed was convicted of a felony for threatening to use deadly force but not actually using it. Had he shot his attacker, he would have saved himself years of legal work.

Did you know that for every car manufactured, at least 95% of them are involved in some kind of crime? From parking and traffic violations to human trafficking and murder, cars are the cornerstone for this EPIDEMIC!! ZOMG!

Soccer mom fear mongering doesn't make a good argument for (or against) anything.

If someone were to encourage an intruder to leave quickly (with no shots fired), there is no accountability nor paper trail. Not everything should turn into a complaint to law enforcement. A lot of those potential intruders learn from their mistake.

If, as another example, the local hoodlums knew someone was well armed, they may choose to avoid trouble with that person. Again, no shots fired. No police reports.

Like the next AC said.. If someone wants good guns, it's easier to hit a police station, gun store, pawn shop, or the local national guard armory. Police stations can be rough, except the "office" stations, which are basically unmanned outside of normal business hours.

Gun stores are suppose to vault all their weapons after hours. When I've talked to some, they depend on their building security, considering the entire building to be the "vault", including the sales floor.

"It's just as well," the Verizon spokesperson said, "It wasn't close to turning a profit, and that didn't even count the extra costs feeding the home info from all sensors to the NSA, whom we aren't even legally allowed to charge."

"It's just as well," the Verizon spokesperson said, "It wasn't close to turning a profit, and that didn't even count the extra costs feeding the home info from all sensors to the NSA, whom we aren't even legally allowed to charge."

Which I did with my own alarm, security camera and home automation systems. Without paying anyone $10/month extra for the privilege of hooking that stuff up to my broadband connection and having worldwide access to it.

They pushed the service on every call I made to FIOS tech support or Verizon billing, so they certainly communicated the availability of the service. However, they never really had a shot at making this service fly due to a number of challenges.

- There just aren't a lot of devices linked yet within a home, especially since Verizon was targeting a novice and not someone who's played with X10 or can configure their own router.

- Verizon support is terrible for most products, and this would likely have been even worse.

- Who really needs to control their lighting and thermostats more than they already do. By now anyone with a computer or Verizon Internet service likely has a programmable thermostat, motion sensor outdoor lights, and timers on lamps for when they go on vacation. Is it worth paying a bloated company like Verizon $120 a year to help you manage what you're already handling fine for free?

The nail in the coffin was probably Google purchasing Nest. And no, I did not RTFA.

You know its funny, these guys once in a while get to a market too early, then because revenue is too weak, decide it isn't promising enough to invest in. Players enter the market (Nest, Google, etc) and it slowly starts to pick up steam. MBA's higher up decide it's been "long enough" so divest themselves of the endeavor. Mark my words, within the next 36 months there will be an explosion in that marketspace, some Verizon executive is going to scream "why didn't we see this" and then they will take 2 years reentering the market they tried to start.

Mark my words, within the next 36 months there will be an explosion in that marketspace

Indeed. Both Lowe's and Staples [cepro.com] have been farting around with standards-based (zigbee, z-wave and wi-fi) home automation equipment for about a year and it looks like they are ramping up for 2014.

There's just too many DIY options out there for self monitoring to make it worth paying somebody else to do what the owner can themselves. But then again there certainly are different needs for different people.
For example EyezOn has a module called Envisalink 3 which works with DSC and Honeywell security systems: it makes them accessible via the web and alerts can be sent via text/email to a number of contacts for a number of events. I've had the module for about a year now, picked it up for around $130,

It was mostly things like remote controlled power strips, IP cameras, thermostats, and electronic door locks. I'm not surprised they stopped selling the service since most of those things either don't need a computer to control (IP cameras with a built-in server or a central reciever for multiple cameras) or could just be set to a timer (power outlets and thermostats). It was a neat service for people who didn't want to put in the effort to setup their own stuff and wanted a all-in-one deal to control all o